Over Christmas I visited with long time friends and of course we talked about both the past and the present. The issue of faith and our place was central to who we were and are. In one sense our theme was still the U2 has a great song called “Still haven’t found what I am looking for.”

Then over the beginning weeks of January I gathered with another set of friends. Watched movies, ate well, and shared wine and conversation. We started with True Grit, a version of Calvin that only two Jewish boys could tell. Satisfying in sound, visuals, and dialogue. Under the images was that great old gospel - “Leaning on the everlasting arms.” The movie ends, both with better conclusion than the first version, no nice happy ending, and a reprise of the Peggy Lee song, “Is that all there is?”

Through out all the conversations was the question of how to hear supreme love... to hear John Coltrane’s “Love Supreme.” The yearning for what Whitehead calls the Adventure of Ideas, harmony and intensity that moves, our feet, our bodies, into new realities. These songs reflect the perennial existential question of what makes humanity flourish? We come to the questions about what is worthy of us at different stages of our life. Context shapes our question of what is it that we want to define us.

I can imagine the early church asking is this all there is? We have been subjected and pushed to the edges. They asked in their time and place how will we flourish?

In our Acts passage we get the marching orders for the church. We may puzzle over the meaning of the coming of the Spirit. They did then. The watchers ask if the disciples were drunk.

It is called ecstatic speech. We have all some experience of this when we are so excited we cannot get out our words or they tumble over one another. Then there are times the moment of awe is so great we say nothing. There is nothing magical about this experience, and the writer of Acts uses colourful and metaphorical language to tell of a moment when the world changed.

We all have a moment or event in which our world changed. We heard or saw things in new ways, heard or saw things that we had never had before. Our world was changed, we were changed.

One of the warnings we get is be careful with your personal information because there are people out to steal our identity. Identity theft is with us and it has always been with us. Those who experience it speak of losing their sense of self. They have become a nobody - a sense they no longer exist. They say their sense of self - their soul has been stolen. They no longer exist, cannot be seen. In the past, though, it was much more violent. The Romans used the Cross to achieve this - the one crucified becomes a nobody. Their identity stolen. Their reality is destroyed - it is as if they never existed. Crucifixion destroyed identity.

Yet here we are with Mary. The one she loved was crucified. The Romans tried to wipe away any sense of Jesus - to make him a nobody, to wipe away all memory of him. But for Mary it was not an end. She is still searching. She is looking for meaning. We, too, gather this Easter morning to celebrate the memory of a crucified one - Jesus.

December 24, 2009

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The Rev. Dr. George Hermanson

There we are, my brother and I, in the backseat, and the motels with their no vacancy signs. The tension is rising as we drive on and on. It was getting dark so my father decides he will go to the Banff Springs Hotel. It is beyond our price range but maybe they might have a room. No, but we can put you up in the staff house - a tent on a cold night. But the innkeeper had taken pity on us.

There we are, in Jamaica and the rooms are not there because the innkeeper did not make the family move because of death. Steve and I phone around and no rooms. Then one place says we have rooms in part of the hotel under renovations. The innkeeper had taken pity on us.

There they are, Mary and Joseph looking for shelter against the storm. And words we use every Christmas, “No room in the inn.” We have had generations of sermons that have emphasized the surface meaning of the story. We have been called upon to open our closed hearts, to prepare room for the heart of love. We have been asked to birth a generous spirit. Of course, there is truth to this metaphor. It is true that at this time of the year our hearts are touched and we do become more inclusive and welcoming of the stranger. All good stuff from those famous lines.

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The Rev. Dr. George Hermanson

As we gather at the table where we are hosted by God, we remember the gift of the stable. This night is not simply a narrative of past events, it is a story that speaks of God presence with us, in this world of ours. The story begins with a birth that speaks of the “scandal of particularity.”

We miss this because there is a problem we have with the Christmas story. We know the ending before we even begin. It’s like watching the movie It’s a Wonderful Life when it’s on TV. We already know how it turns out. We see each turn in the Christmas story with such familiarity that we don't appreciate the risk and the love which was required to make it all turn out okay. The story of Mary and Joseph is not a simple story where God has already decided the outcome and everyone is merely doing as they are told. This is a moment full of risking your life and your reputation on a baby. This is a moment full of sacrifice, based on nothing more than a promise. It is a moment of free response.

November 20, 2008

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The Rev. Dr. George Hermanson

Have you noticed how we ritualize things. Watch the Grey Cup today and you will see ritual writ large. Or in hockey, how some have to put their equipment on in a certain order. Or the commercial of the guy who does not want his lucky sock washed.

Well the ritual in the church is designed to cause us to stop and quiet ourselves, reflect, and be open to the creative adventure of God. We move from ordinary space and time into sacred time and space. We move from the busyness of the world into reflection time - to prepare us for the aim of God to burst into our consciousness.

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The Rev. Dr. George Hermanson

We all love the parable of the talents. It is used in all sorts of ways. The fact it is loved and well known does not mean it is easily understood or that there is an easy application of the story.

Most we have been taught that the talent is just that - some gift we have - particularly a spiritual gift. What is done is we make it into a metaphor or an allegory which is similar to not hiding our light under a bushel basket. The interpretative model is that talents are gifts from God, to be used for God or buried and hidden and ignored. This idea is important and does reflect the not hiding our light. But it does not catch the full impact of the parable.

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The Rev. Dr. George Hermanson

It is one of those - "it goes without saying" things - we see events from our personal experience. We filter the world out of what we believe and what has formed us. Symbolic acts create moments that form us and then we must move on to how to live the moment of transformation.

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The Rev. Dr. George Hermanson

Show off. One of our early learning's has been not to be a show off. Then we get the confusing advice to be the best we can - to excel - to be excellent. It is hard to navigate between the idea of pride and hubris - that is the tension between the idea of self esteem and having an enlarged ego, an extreme sense of self. Our identity formation is a process of creating an sense of of self that neither thinks too highly of oneself or not highly enough.

I watched my grandson practice hockey and saw how he was learning confidence in his ability. Afterwards, I asked him about his sense of himself and he said “I am the best.” Yet objectively I could see how he could improve. Thus, the question of how to nurture that confidence yet have a realistic sense of how he needed to improve and grow to become what he saw himself as.

October 17, 2008

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The Rev. Dr. George Hermanson

This morning we welcomed two new members into the community of faith by baptism. Baptism begins the process of the development of Christian character. This is a formation of an identity that is centered in a sense of God. This sense gives an identity for world care. It is a development of a faith that is more than private and has public implications for how we act and live in the world. We are forming a child of God so that they will reflect in their living the beauty and aim of God. An identity that has implications for our social and political worlds.